Archive for
September, 2011

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One of the questions I have for my new patients is how much stress do they have not only in their work life but in their personal life.. I ask this question not to get an accurate answer. I ask this question to figure out how they handle stress and how this stress affects them physically. The only people that don’t have stress are those that are dead. And the only way to grow is to have stress. The trick is not to be stress free the trick is to know how to create eustress as oppose to distress. Here are some tips that might help you create the right kind of stress in your Network Marketing Business and become a pro at handling all kinds of situations.

Change your perspective- This is the main way to overcome stress. It’s all a matter of perspective. Take a second and imagine having problems paying your mortgage this month. Now imagine if another month went by and you could not pay it. I bet that would make you pretty stressful. You could even go into a depression over it. I know it would bring me anxiety. I probably would even lose sleep. Now erase that. Clear it out of your mind.

Now think of Donald Trump one of the times when he was having financial trouble. Think of him walking down the streets of New York city and as he passes by a homeless person he points to the man and says to his daughter you see that man he has a billion dollars more than me. What kind of stress do you think that would bring someone. Remember the great depression. For some the only way out was suicide.

My point is this no matter what kind of situation you are in having a negative unempowering visceral reaction is not going to help you change it. So you need to turn the negative into a positive and the way to do that is to turn the distress into eustress.

So let me give you some steps that help me. I learned this originally from Anthony Robbins. Tim Ferris also does a great job in his book the 4 hour work week of expanding the idea. Here it is;

Step 1- Define what really is causing you the stress? Sometimes we get frustrated over the small stuff when it is the what is causing the problem with everything else is the big pink elephant in the room. Is it picking up the phone, the over used fear of rejection, is it that you think someone is going to come knocking at your door because you offered them an opportunity they did not like? What is your stress? In the the mortgage story the stress is obvious. So now it is your third month not paying your mortgage so if your mortgage is 1,000 dollars not taking interest into account after three month you would owe $3000 dollars. But your situation has not changed, what are you going to do? How will you make something if you have nothing and you can’t even help yourself so how are you going to help anyone else.

Step 2- Now define what is the absolute worst thing that could happen if your fears become real? What would be your fears? Being evicted from your house? Living in the street? Living on someones couch? Not having food to eat? Being on government assistance? Living back at home with your parents? Living at home with your spouses parents?Keep in mind that this can be used for any fears or mental stress that is in your life. Whether it is an oppressive boss or your primary company just went out of business without asking you if they could do so.

Step 3-What would be your reaction? What could you do to pick up the pieces or repair the damage? Just think about this before you answer. Where do you think Donald Trump would be if he said to himself, well I better get a job. So I can pay back that billion dollars.

Step 4-What are the positive outcomes if you looked at your stress as a motivator instead of a demotivator?

I remember when Anthony Robbins spoke of his employee embezzling money from him realizing how deep financial trouble he was. He employed this same formula then made a decision that it was not going to happen.

These steps have helped me create more stress in my life while growing. If your goal is to stay away from stress you will never grow. The more that you embrace stress and convert distress to eustress the faster and bigger you will grow.

A very legitimate question but one that you won’t be able to get a straight answer to. Why? Because it is a business. It is your own business. The success of any independent distributor will depend upon the amount of hard work, talent, and dedication which you devote to building your business.

More than 90% of the people that register their business with a network marketing company go on to do nothing. They mere action of registering their business is sufficient for them to feel that they done something to build their financial future. I heard Anthony Robbins one day say that only about 10% of people that buy a self help book actually read past the first chapter. I suspect this is the same phenomenon in network marketing. Registering their business is like reading the first chapter of a self help book. So there is no simple answer. As you read the rest of the article I will help you figure out how you can find out for the company that you are interested in.

It is somewhat unfair to lump all the typical distributors with those that are pros at their business. Most companies never separate the two so they give you typical numbers that are not very useful. A better system for the average company would be to set requirements that need to be meet in order to show that you are actually building your business. These requirements would have to be income independent activities that show that you are actually working. If you measure the average distributor in the mlm industry by how much they work you it would be like trying to see how many widgets a factory worker can make by not coming to work.

Another issue when looking at overall industry averages is that the average netwroker works their business on a part time basis. It is a business that is done on their off hours.We also can’t overlook that it is based on the opportunity itself. How is the opportunity set up? How does the compensation plan work? Can anyone start making income immediately? Do they pay for registrations or just for volume produced?

Unfortunately I can not give you a clear answer. What I do know is that in every company there are people that make money. I was blessed when I took a look at the company that I work with, they have a program where they separate the people that are actively building the business from those that are just registered. The average weighted annual earnings of those that do the requirements to show that they are actively building the business was 53,000 dollars per year when I was initially introduced to the company. Ranging from approximately 31,000 at the low end to 231,000+ at the high end. Again this only accounted for approximately 10% of all distributors. Because only about 10% of distributor actually bothered being professionals.

If you do not have access to this information I suggest that you do a little research of your own . Ask current distributor that are earning what you would like to earn these few questions.

In your opinion what are the income producing activities for me to make money in this company?

On average how many distributors have you sponsored personally into the company?

On average how many people have you been personally involved in sponsoring?

On average how many hours did you actively put in into the company when you got serious about building?

Approximately how much money you are making and how long it took you to make that money?

With the answers to these questions in hand now you can go to the average distributor in the company and ask them these questions.

How many hours do you spend doing income producing activities?- It does not matter how much time they spend doing the business. I know people that attend every meeting and business presentation they can but unless you have guest and new distributors that you are introducing to the business you are not doing income producing activities.

How consistent are you at these income producing activities?- Consistency is key. If they have been an independent distributor for 5 years but have the tendency of working hard for one month and stopping for two they are not doing the business. I know I have personal experience at this.

Approximately how much money are you making?

If you can ask these questions you will have a better picture of how the particular company that you are looking at works. And I suspect that you will find out that it depends on if you are a hobbyist or a pro. You will also realize that the success of any independent distributor will depend upon the amount of hard work, talent, and dedication which they devote to building their business. So now when some one asks you How much money do you make? You can answer with- That is a typical beginners question. The simplest answer is that the success of your business is dependent upon the amount of hard work, talent, and dedication which you devote to building your business